


Futile

by Hydrophius



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe?, Confused Thor (Marvel), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frigga is a little shit too, Hurt/Comfort, I was reading stuff about Norse Mythology and this little oneshot forced itself into my brain, Nidhogg has no clue how to deal with other deities and their emotions, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Odin's Bad Parenting (Marvel), Pre-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Thor Needs a Hug (Marvel), Thor has heatstroke, both of them faked their deaths, he lives purely to eat roots and insult the Eagle at the top of Yggdrasil, kind of, loki is a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hydrophius/pseuds/Hydrophius
Summary: Lightning crackled at Thor’s fingertips as he glared at the dragon.“You and those snakes gnaw upon Yggdrasil’s roots, day in, day out. You will topple it eventually, and I seek to prevent it,” he growled.Nidhogg huffed, the brunt of the gush of air slamming Thor in the face. Thor adjusted his stance to keep himself upright.“Your efforts are futile, Thunder God. You cannot prevent Ragnarok, just as you cannot reverse your mother or brother’s deaths,” the dragon hissed.
Kudos: 12





	Futile

Thor pinned the gargantuan root-eating dragon down with Mjolnir. Nidhogg screeched as the weight of the hammer settled on his long, black tail, and rendered his efforts to free himself of Thor’s strong grip useless. His head thrashed, the two branch-like, glossy, brown horns atop it narrowly missing a collision with the ground. The spines along his neck, similar in design to the horns, were raised. 

Eventually, the thrashing stopped. God and dragon regarded each other with narrowed eyes, both panting heavily. Thor watched as the occasional twitch of pain spasmed across the dragon’s huge mottled green and black scaled body.

Nidhogg licked his scaly lips, then spoke in a hissing voice, “Why do you attack me, Odinson? I have done nothing to warrant such treatment.”

Lightning crackled at Thor’s fingertips as he glared at the dragon.

“You and those snakes gnaw upon Yggdrasil’s roots, day in, day out. You will topple it eventually, and I seek to prevent it,” he growled.

Nidhogg huffed, the brunt of the gush of air slamming Thor in the face. Thor adjusted his stance to keep himself upright.

“Your efforts are futile, Thunder God. You cannot prevent Ragnarok, just as you cannot reverse your mother or brother’s apparent death,” the dragon hissed.

What did the slithery bastard mean by “apparent deaths”? They couldn’t have survived. He’d seen them both die.

Thor shocked the snakes still gnawing at the World Tree’s third root with a blast of lightning. Thunder followed the blast soon after and flung their long, thick bodies from the tree’s surface. It was as ineffective as his lightning strikes upon Nidhogg had been. The snakes simply regained their bearings, then set back to work upon the root. Thor didn’t even bother trying to tame the roaring anger within him. He struck the snakes again, this time with Mjolnir.

He had failed his mother. He had failed his brother. He was pretty sure that he’d failed his father too. Odin hadn’t appeared to be disappointed with him when he refused the throne and chose to hunt for the Infinity Stones instead, but his father’s emotions could be confusing at times, and Thor wasn’t the best at reading them.

But Loki and Mother.

His brother was dead, along with his mother.

It was his fault.

He hadn’t been able to get to Mother’s rooms in time. He hadn’t been able to stop Malekith’s helspawn of a beast from running Mother’s own sword through her fragile body. He hadn’t been able to stop it from doing the same to Loki either.

They would definitely be disappointed with him if they could see what he’d been doing for the past two years. He’d been running around like a headless chicken, looking for the Infinity Stones and seeking answers that would help him understand his vision to no avail. But they couldn’t see. They couldn’t help him. They were dead.

He roared as he brought another bolt of lightning down upon the snakes.

Nidhogg made a low sound in his reptilian throat, and Thor turned around, only just realising that he’d freed the being he sought to destroy.

“That is quite enough, Odinson,” the massive dragon said, voice almost soft.

Nidhogg didn’t attack, he merely lay down with his massive head -- well, one of his eyes -- level with Thor’s own head, and slowly lifted a huge claw to carefully wipe at something on his face. He backed away from the dragon, only just realising that the beast had wiped away the tears that had somehow begun to stream down his cheeks without him knowing.

Nidhogg’s eye -- an ever-changing shade of forest green, gold and silver -- rolled in its dark scaled socket.

“Get out if you’re going to sit here and cry,” the dragon grumbled. 

“I’m not crying!” Thor shouted, wiping his eyes and sniffing.

“Of course you aren’t,” Nidhogg said sarcastically. The dragon shifted, then nudged him back toward the branch he’d slid off of when he first arrived. “Unless you’re going to offer to take a message to the Eagle as an apology for attacking me, I don’t want you down here. Ragnarok approaches soon, and even if you could stop it, you can’t.”

Thor stared at the dragon, mouth agape. The roots of Yggdrasil were not unstable enough to shake the tree yet. The Fimbulvetr hadn’t even started! He had hoped that by slaying Nidhogg and his serpentine allies, he might buy them all more time. But if what the dragon said was true, then he was wasting his time down here. 

Panic surged through him, cold as ice. He wasn’t ready. Midgard wasn’t ready.  _ The Nine _ wasn’t ready to become one massive battleground of mutual destruction. 

“How can this be?” he started, stumbling as he was pushed over to the branch.

“Stopping me won’t stop Ragnarok, Odinson. There are many factors at play in the endgame that are already beginning to make themselves known again. Ragnarok is inevitable. You know this.” The dragon continued to push him toward the branch. “I wouldn’t believe your brother or your mother to be dead either. They are among the most powerful gods in this cycle; a mere stab wound isn’t going to take them down,”

Thor froze.

“I watched my mother’s corpse dissolve into starlight, and I held my brother in my arms as he died,” he growled, disbelieving.

Nidhogg deposited him up onto the branch with a flick of his thick, black tail.

“Oh, boo hoo. Have you learned  _ nothing  _ of seidr, boy?”

Thor rounded on the dragon. Mjolnir crackled with lightning.

“Evidently not. If you want to make an attempt at stopping Ragnarok, you’ll want to pay Surtr a visit,” Nidhogg growled. “He’s the one responsible for Asgard’s pending fall.”

The dragon took his massive claw off of the branch -- Thor hadn’t noticed he was holding it down in the first place, his vision had been blurred with tears -- a nasty grin spread onto his ugly, scaled face as he winked. Thor was catapulted up Yggdrasil’s trunk, a startled scream of terror escaping him as he shot upward at breakneck speed -- unprotected by anything like the magic that encased him when he traveled the Bifrost -- and into Muspelheim’s scorching heat.

Thor couldn’t do anything as the Fire Jotnar eventually closed in on him after five minutes of calling for the guards. He could only think about what the dragon had said, and feel all the moisture he possessed within his body begin to make a break for it as the realm’s high temperature purged through him. He lay upon the ground, limp, hammerless, and in shock. Mjolnir had been lost somewhere in Yggdrasil’s many branches, but he would call for it later when he escaped.

_ If _ he escaped and didn’t die of heat stroke first.

But, Nidhogg’s words still screamed at him. They gave him hope, however small it was.

Loki had been dead before. He couldn’t have survived his fall from Asgard, and yet he’d returned to them. He’d attempted to conquer Midgard, he’d been fine. Loki could be alive.  _ Mother _ could be alive.

Thor grinned stupidly and wiped his face free of sweat -- which proved to be a useless thing to do, because he only kept sweating -- then allowed his captors to move him around. He had no plan, but if he was being taken to a cell, then perhaps he might be able to think of one.

Of course Loki and Mother would be alive, they were the best seidr wielders he’d ever met! They wouldn’t be stopped by a stab wound!

_ You don’t know that, _ a voice in his head whispered.  _ You saw them both die. You were too late to save them. It’s your fault they’re dead. If they were alive now, do you really think they’d stay away from you? From Asgard? From home? _

The heat was unbearable, black spots swam at the edges of his tear-blurred vision as he looked up at the orange sky and watched embers swirl in the hot, dry wind above him. A Fire Jotunn loomed above him, fiery eyes burning into him as he studied Thor laying on the ground. His vision went black as he was hauled upright and set on his feet, arms pinned to his sides beneath thick chains.

Thor walked without thinking or taking note of where they were headed. His vision swam, the floor felt like it was moving beneath him.

“Throw him in the cage,” a deep voice said.

Thor was hurled into a cage. He felt like he’d been trampled by a herd of War Elephants, and he’d be surprised if he didn’t have a concussion or was at least a little dazed. He’d flown fast before, but not as fast as the speeds he’d reached upon his entry into the fiery hellscape he now had an excellent view of while dangling in a cage from the ceiling of Surtr’s hall.

The empty sockets of a skeleton stared at him from across his little prison.

“‘Ello,” he slurred.

The skeleton only stared. It did not answer, but somewhere in the back of Thor’s slowly boiling brain, it answered with its own small greeting.

In the end, his dazed attempts at conversation with the skeleton, and staying awake, were futile. It simply wouldn’t answer him. It was long gone. It was dead, and his head hurt.

Thor closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

He could have sworn he felt his mother’s cool hand on his forehead and heard Loki’s snigger as he drifted off.

**Author's Note:**

> No, this isn't Whumptober or anything. I was just reading some stuff about Norse Mythology so I could get some of my worldbuilding notes/ideas written up and this appeared.
> 
> I wanted to write something about Thor's 2 year hunt for the Stones, and I figured he'd eventually have gone to do something about the dreams of Ragnarok he'd had, so this is that. 
> 
> And in case you couldn't tell, I'm not using the MCU's version of Ragnarok because I was severely disappointed with it. Like yeah sure, Asgard's gone, but like, Ragnarok is the end of _everything._ Not just one frisbee in space. 
> 
> Take it how you want it lol. I just let my fingers do the typing and tried to write in Thor's POV for once and practice my angst/whump/character torturing skills.
> 
> Have a great week! Thanks for reading :D <3


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